New York City Plans to Layoff Nearly 4,700 Teachers

Feb. 17: New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg delivers the fiscal year 2012 budget at City Hall in New York.
(AP)

NEW YORK -- Some New York City schools could lose 20 percent of their current teachers under a layoff scenario released by city officials as part of their campaign to change teacher seniority laws.

The school-by-school breakdown of an estimated 4,675 layoffs shows that 80 percent of the city's public schools would be affected. Most of approximately 1,600 schools would lose one to five teachers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said that Gov. Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget, which would cut $1.4 billion in aid to city schools, will leave him with no option but to lay off teachers.

Under the state law that Bloomberg is seeking to overturn, any teacher layoffs would be governed by seniority, with the most recently hired teachers getting the ax. Schools staffed mainly with recent hires could lose 30 to 40 percent of their teachers, and veteran teachers from other schools would replace them.

The only teachers who would be spared from layoffs are those who teach special education, English as a second language and speech improvement, which are positions that are harder to fill.

City Hall released the layoff list Sunday as the state Senate prepared to vote on a bill that would allow the city to lay off teachers based performance rather than seniority.

United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew charged Monday that Bloomberg "is trying to create fear to push legislation in Albany."

"There is no need to do teacher layoffs in New York City," Mulgrew said.

Cuomo's budget director, Robert Megna, has said that the city has $2 billion in reserves that could be used to offset the loss of school funding. Cuomo spokesman Josh Vlasto noted Monday that Bloomberg announced a plan to cut thousands of teacher jobs in November, before the state budget was released.

But the mayor reiterated that teacher layoffs are on the agenda.

"We have a budget problem," he said. "The public has a right to know what's going on. We're not trying to scare anybody."

The Senate Education Committee expects to take up the teacher-seniority bill Tuesday, and it could hit the Senate floor this week. But the bill has no Assembly sponsor and appears to have little support in that body.

"Right now there is a law on the books that says merit doesn't matter -- the last teachers hired are the first to be laid off, period," she said. "This arbitrary standard means that some schools will lose up to half of their teachers, just because they have chosen to hire teachers new to the profession. There is a better way to do this. We can change the law and keep the best teachers for our kids."